Rikard sat back on his heels, both mentally and physically exhausted. He’d almost lost her. And he was almost guaranteed to lose her again when she woke and found out what he’d done. Somehow, murder was not the worst crime he’d committed tonight.
But for now, he had her heart. He held it in his mind like a treasure.
Aalis watched them both with an expression he couldn’t read. Betje leaned around him to check Hanna’s pulse.
“Improved,” she pronounced after a long minute.
Carlijn raised her face from the cushions where she’d been weeping silently, her ringlets clinging damply to the sides of her face. “She’s all right?”
Betje pushed up her spectacles with a tired sigh. “Still weak, but at least she’s not worsening.”
“Come look at your daughter,” Aalis commanded. She was frowning at him, and for good reason. He’d all but forgotten the hatchling.
He scrambled to his feet. His legs barely held him up, but he crossed to the cradle and looked down at the infant. Small and fair-skinned like her mother, she had tufts of dark hair on her head. Wings folded against her back like crumpled silk, still in their casings, and her tiny hands were tipped with claws. Her eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling in the rhythm of sleep.
He brushed her impossibly soft cheek with one knuckle.
“Your mother is alive and your father is here,” he whispered. “All will be well.”
Chapter 31
Hannalinde
She surfaced in stages, the darkness thinning into gray and the gray thinning into light. At each stage, something hurt.
A low, dragging ache in her hips radiated outward. She swallowed and her throat rebelled, dry as chalk. Her belly clenched like the pains of labor.
The baby.
She opened her eyes.
She was in her bedroom at Rose House. Golden evening light played over the bed like amber fingers, which meant she’d sleptthrough an entire day. The linens had been changed. Someone had placed a vase of roses on the side table, their fragrance threading through the pungent scents of herbs and lye soap and blood that lingered in the air.
Carlijn snored in the chair beside the bed, her mouth slightly open. At the foot of the bed, Betje sat watching. “There you are,” she said, rising to her feet.
Hanna smiled wanly. “Here I am.”
“How are you feeling?”
A thrum of dread in her mind stopped Hanna’s reply.
It filled the back of her skull like a gray fog. The space that had been empty during labor was full again. Overflowing. He was near.
The reprieve had been temporary. She’d been a fool to hope otherwise. The bond’s silence during labor had been a mercy of the body under duress, and now it was back.Hewas back.
Her hands began to shake.
“My baby,” she said, panicking internally. “Where is the baby?”
“Here she is.” Betje lifted a woven basket lined with one of the nursery blankets Hanna had embroidered with her prized blue silk and set it on the bed beside her hip. Inside, wrapped in soft swaddling clothes, a small face slept, pink lips pursed like a rosebud.
She reached into the cradle. Her hands shook, but the shaking stopped the moment her fingers smoothed the infant’s downy hair. How could she have doubted her ability to love this perfect, blameless being?
She lifted the child to her chest. The infant stirred, rooting insistently against her shift. Hanna pulled aside the fabric to allow her access, and she greedily latched on.
“She’s strong,” Betje said affectionately, watching them. “She’s been fed goat’s milk while you were under, but she obviously prefers you.”
“She lived,” Hannalinde whispered, staring down at her child’s face.
